1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a portable terminal such as portable phone including a display panel having a touch pad, and more particularly, to an improvement on a user interface.
2. Description of the Related Art
There has been known a technique of dividing a display surface of a display panel into a plurality of display areas, each of which is a unit of performing control relating to an image display, in a portable terminal such as portable phone (for example, refer to JP-A-H9-134270 or JP-A-2008-28785). According to the technique disclosed in JP-A-H9-134270, a user drags an icon at a left end on a screen to a right end in a horizontal direction on a display panel having a touch pad, thereby dividing a display surface into two upper and lower display areas. Then, in the respective display areas, schedules having different time units such as schedule of one day and schedule of one week are displayed.
Also, according to the technique disclosed in JP-A-2008-28785, a display screen of a television receiver is divided into three display areas at predetermined positions and different images (two different program images and a web screen, and the like) are displayed in the respective display areas.
According to the above techniques, the user can see the images displayed in the respective display area at the same time without performing an operation of replacing a display object image.
In recent years, portable terminals having a relatively large screen size have been used. Hence, it is thought that it is useful to divide the display surface into more display areas and to see the images displayed in the respective display areas at the same time.